The Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau’s $62,000 branding and marketing campaign is money unwisely spent.

North Star, a company in Nashville, Tenn., was hired to conduct research to help the bureau develop a new strategy to better market the city and its attractions.

North Star spent the next year sending representatives to the city to talk with business owners, residents, tourism officials and visitors.

The result was what already is known by anyone who has lived in this city for even a short time: the city’s two biggest advantages are the Civil War and the Mississippi River.

All the VCVB has to show for the money is a logo, referring to Vicksburg as “the key to the South,” to be used on its website, twitter feed and printed literature and signs.

Why did the VCVB hire a firm outside Mississippi to help brand and market the city of Vicksburg? Vicksburg is full of creative and educated people who could have conducted the necessary research to show that we are better known in the Dallas/Fort Worth area than the Atlanta area, another finding of North Star’s research.

The VCVB could have hired local graphic designers and researchers — and probably for a lot less than $62,000. Besides keeping that money in the local tax base, the VCVB could have capitalized on the residents, a group who obviously would have been the best to pour their hearts and souls into marketing the city.

Marketing and advertising agencies are not plentiful in Vicksburg, but several well-known agencies are based within about 40 miles away, in the Jackson Metro area. While not local, the agencies are in Mississippi.

Mississippi and Mississippians have had a negative reputation for far too long. Why not use Mississippians to change that thinking? The Mississippi, Believe It! campaign comes to mind. A few of us can even draw. That highly successful ad campaign — which pointed out that such greats as Eudora Welty and Jim Henson were products of the state — was conducted by The Cirlot Agency in Flowood. You can find the Believe It! campaign at mississippibelieveit.com.

Using Mississippians to promote Mississippi should be “the key” to promoting Vicksburg and all it has to offer.